by David Evans
“World-changers meet in Maine” reads the headline on a Christian Science Monitor article about last week’s Pop!Tech conference in Maine, attended by, the report says, “several hundred movers and shakers from corporations, think tanks, and universities.”
Do they change the world? Well, one Pop!Tech participant started a program that lets regular folks make small loans to poor but motivated entrepreneurs anywhere via the Internet. Another designs tools that can make a real difference in the standard of living of people making less than even $1 a day. He estimates that over the past 25 years he’s helped 17 million people escape poverty. And a new initiative, called the Pop!Tech Accelerator, wants to bring together innovators to tackle such big challenges as helping poor South Africans with AIDS manage their medical treatment.
It’s all great stuff, and no one should discount the good that can come from the work of innovators and from conferences such as Pop!Tech. But, while they may not have made it to Pop!Tech, neither should anyone discount the good that can be done by spiritual innovators attending a summit of young Christian Scientists this Saturday in Chicago.
Can Christian Scientists really be movers and shakers who can “change the world” like people who attended Pop!Tech?
Yep. And more.
“We, to-day, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind,” Mary Baker Eddy told a group of 65 Christian Scientists, continuing, “for then the whole world will feel the influence of this Mind; as when the earth was without form, and Mind spake and form appeared” (Miscellaneous Writings,, pp. 279-280).
Sixty-five people can change the world? Yes. In fact, even fewer, as numbers really aren’t important. That’s the power of one Mind and the Science of that Mind-Christian Science.
How do we do it? As Mrs. Eddy told those Christian Scientists (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 281-282),
You will need . . . practice more than theory. You are going out to demonstrate a living faith, a true sense of the infinite good, a sense that does not limit God, but brings to human view an enlarged sense of Deity. Remember, it is personality, and the sense of personality in God or in man, that limits man.
To change the world, you have to actually do something, not just spout theories about what ought to be done. And what we have to do is have that “true sense of the infinite good”-one that gets out of personality completely and fully into one Mind-and act accordingly.
Think you’re not ready? Think the time’s not right? Christ Jesus said otherwise: “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).
There’s no personal ability involved here-in fact, just the opposite. To really change the world, we need the humility to surrender material ways of thinking and acting-the humility to do nothing but reflect God. Nothing can unleash more good for mankind.
Will the world change overnight? Not likely. Jesus didn’t accomplish that either-but he accomplished a whole lot and said we could do even more. How? The same way Jesus did: by going to God (see John 14:12)-by putting off limited material notions of ourselves and our world and instead adopting spiritual viewpoints.
Another Monitor article notes that the Pop!Tech conference asked the question “What does it mean to be a human being at the beginning of the 21st century?” Christian Scientists at the Chicago summit or elsewhere can even more profitably ask “What does it mean to be a spiritual being at the beginning of the 21st century?”
The answer can change the world.
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It’s really exciting to think about what those kids in Chicago can accomplish…
Yes we can change the world but in order to do it we must follow Mrs. Eddy’s request:
You will need . . . practice more than theory. You are going out to demonstrate a living faith, a true sense of the infinite good, a sense that does not limit God, but brings to human view an enlarged sense of Deity. Remember, it is personality, and the sense of personality in God or in man, that limits man.
We must get out of our personal boudaries (what business trainers call the comfortable sphere of ones’s personality), we must go into the world as Jesus told us to do and finally fulfill the Christian Science Trade Mark Logo:
Heal the sick . Raise the dead . Cleanse the leppers . Cast out demons
I’d love to hear how summit attendees are changing the world. Anyone?